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  • Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences  (5)
  • 1
    Online Resource
    Online Resource
    Dated language phylogenies shed light on the ancestry of Sino-Tibetan
    Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences ; 2019
    In:  Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Vol. 116, No. 21 ( 2019-05-21), p. 10317-10322
    Details
    In: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Vol. 116, No. 21 ( 2019-05-21), p. 10317-10322
    Abstract: The Sino-Tibetan language family is one of the world’s largest and most prominent families, spoken by nearly 1.4 billion people. Despite the importance of the Sino-Tibetan languages, their prehistory remains controversial, with ongoing debate about when and where they originated. To shed light on this debate we develop a database of comparative linguistic data, and apply the linguistic comparative method to identify sound correspondences and establish cognates. We then use phylogenetic methods to infer the relationships among these languages and estimate the age of their origin and homeland. Our findings point to Sino-Tibetan originating with north Chinese millet farmers around 7200 B.P. and suggest a link to the late Cishan and the early Yangshao cultures.
    Type of Medium: Online Resource
    ISSN: 0027-8424 , 1091-6490
    URL: Article
    DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1817972116
    RVK:
    TA 1000
    RVK:
    WA 15000
    Language: English
    Publisher: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
    Publication Date: 2019
    detail.hit.zdb_id: 209104-5
    detail.hit.zdb_id: 1461794-8
    SSG: 11
    SSG: 12
    Location Call Number Limitation Availability
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    Online Resource
  • 2
    Online Resource
    Online Resource
    Evolutionary dynamics of language systems
    Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences ; 2017
    In:  Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Vol. 114, No. 42 ( 2017-10-17)
    Details
    In: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Vol. 114, No. 42 ( 2017-10-17)
    Abstract: Understanding how and why language subsystems differ in their evolutionary dynamics is a fundamental question for historical and comparative linguistics. One key dynamic is the rate of language change. While it is commonly thought that the rapid rate of change hampers the reconstruction of deep language relationships beyond 6,000–10,000 y, there are suggestions that grammatical structures might retain more signal over time than other subsystems, such as basic vocabulary. In this study, we use a Dirichlet process mixture model to infer the rates of change in lexical and grammatical data from 81 Austronesian languages. We show that, on average, most grammatical features actually change faster than items of basic vocabulary. The grammatical data show less schismogenesis, higher rates of homoplasy, and more bursts of contact-induced change than the basic vocabulary data. However, there is a core of grammatical and lexical features that are highly stable. These findings suggest that different subsystems of language have differing dynamics and that careful, nuanced models of language change will be needed to extract deeper signal from the noise of parallel evolution, areal readaptation, and contact.
    Type of Medium: Online Resource
    ISSN: 0027-8424 , 1091-6490
    URL: Article
    DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1700388114
    RVK:
    TA 1000
    RVK:
    WA 15000
    Language: English
    Publisher: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
    Publication Date: 2017
    detail.hit.zdb_id: 209104-5
    detail.hit.zdb_id: 1461794-8
    SSG: 11
    SSG: 12
    Location Call Number Limitation Availability
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    Online Resource
  • 3
    Online Resource
    Online Resource
    Rate of language evolution is affected by population size
    Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences ; 2015
    In:  Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Vol. 112, No. 7 ( 2015-02-17), p. 2097-2102
    Details
    In: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Vol. 112, No. 7 ( 2015-02-17), p. 2097-2102
    Abstract: The effect of population size on patterns and rates of language evolution is controversial. Do languages with larger speaker populations change faster due to a greater capacity for innovation, or do smaller populations change faster due to more efficient diffusion of innovations? Do smaller populations suffer greater loss of language elements through founder effects or drift, or do languages with more speakers lose features due to a process of simplification? Revealing the influence of population size on the tempo and mode of language evolution not only will clarify underlying mechanisms of language change but also has practical implications for the way that language data are used to reconstruct the history of human cultures. Here, we provide, to our knowledge, the first empirical, statistically robust test of the influence of population size on rates of language evolution, controlling for the evolutionary history of the populations and formally comparing the fit of different models of language evolution. We compare rates of gain and loss of cognate words for basic vocabulary in Polynesian languages, an ideal test case with a well-defined history. We demonstrate that larger populations have higher rates of gain of new words whereas smaller populations have higher rates of word loss. These results show that demographic factors can influence rates of language evolution and that rates of gain and loss are affected differently. These findings are strikingly consistent with general predictions of evolutionary models.
    Type of Medium: Online Resource
    ISSN: 0027-8424 , 1091-6490
    URL: Article
    DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1419704112
    RVK:
    TA 1000
    RVK:
    WA 15000
    Language: English
    Publisher: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
    Publication Date: 2015
    detail.hit.zdb_id: 209104-5
    detail.hit.zdb_id: 1461794-8
    SSG: 11
    SSG: 12
    Location Call Number Limitation Availability
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    Online Resource
  • 4
    Online Resource
    Online Resource
    Phylogeographic analysis of the Bantu language expansion supports a rainforest route
    Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences ; 2022
    In:  Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Vol. 119, No. 32 ( 2022-08-09)
    Details
    In: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Vol. 119, No. 32 ( 2022-08-09)
    Abstract: The Bantu expansion transformed the linguistic, economic, and cultural composition of sub-Saharan Africa. However, the exact dates and routes taken by the ancestors of the speakers of the more than 500 current Bantu languages remain uncertain. Here, we use the recently developed “break-away” geographical diffusion model, specially designed for modeling migrations, with “augmented” geographic information, to reconstruct the Bantu language family expansion. This Bayesian phylogeographic approach with augmented geographical data provides a powerful way of linking linguistic, archaeological, and genetic data to test hypotheses about large language family expansions. We compare four hypotheses: an early major split north of the rainforest; a migration through the Sangha River Interval corridor around 2,500 BP; a coastal migration around 4,000 BP; and a migration through the rainforest before the corridor opening, at 4,000 BP. Our results produce a topology and timeline for the Bantu language family, which supports the hypothesis of an expansion through Central African tropical forests at 4,420 BP (4,040 to 5,000 95% highest posterior density interval), well before the Sangha River Interval was open.
    Type of Medium: Online Resource
    ISSN: 0027-8424 , 1091-6490
    URL: Article
    DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2112853119
    RVK:
    TA 1000
    RVK:
    WA 15000
    Language: English
    Publisher: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
    Publication Date: 2022
    detail.hit.zdb_id: 209104-5
    detail.hit.zdb_id: 1461794-8
    SSG: 11
    SSG: 12
    Location Call Number Limitation Availability
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    Online Resource
  • 5
    Online Resource
    Online Resource
    A global analysis of matches and mismatches between human genetic and linguistic histories
    Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences ; 2022
    In:  Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Vol. 119, No. 47 ( 2022-11-22)
    Details
    In: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Vol. 119, No. 47 ( 2022-11-22)
    Abstract: Human history is written in both our genes and our languages. The extent to which our biological and linguistic histories are congruent has been the subject of considerable debate, with clear examples of both matches and mismatches. To disentangle the patterns of demographic and cultural transmission, we need a global systematic assessment of matches and mismatches. Here, we assemble a genomic database (GeLaTo, or Genes and Languages Together) specifically curated to investigate genetic and linguistic diversity worldwide. We find that most populations in GeLaTo that speak languages of the same language family (i.e., that descend from the same ancestor language) are also genetically highly similar. However, we also identify nearly 20% mismatches in populations genetically close to linguistically unrelated groups. These mismatches, which occur within the time depth of known linguistic relatedness up to about 10,000 y, are scattered around the world, suggesting that they are a regular outcome in human history. Most mismatches result from populations shifting to the language of a neighboring population that is genetically different because of independent demographic histories. In line with the regularity of such shifts, we find that only half of the language families in GeLaTo are genetically more cohesive than expected under spatial autocorrelations. Moreover, the genetic and linguistic divergence times of population pairs match only rarely, with Indo-European standing out as the family with most matches in our sample. Together, our database and findings pave the way for systematically disentangling demographic and cultural history and for quantifying processes of shifts in language and social identities on a global scale.
    Type of Medium: Online Resource
    ISSN: 0027-8424 , 1091-6490
    URL: Article
    DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2122084119
    RVK:
    TA 1000
    RVK:
    WA 15000
    Language: English
    Publisher: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
    Publication Date: 2022
    detail.hit.zdb_id: 209104-5
    detail.hit.zdb_id: 1461794-8
    SSG: 11
    SSG: 12
    Location Call Number Limitation Availability
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    Online Resource
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